


Lucky

by igiveup101



Category: Justified
Genre: And violence, Gen, In which Tim can't admit he has problems even to himself, Mentions of Death, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 03:39:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3342185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igiveup101/pseuds/igiveup101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character study about some after-effects from the war</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky

Tim doesn't know why Art is so convinced he has a problem.

So what if sometimes he wakes up huddled in a corner, gun in hand and pointed at the door? It isn't a big deal; he leaves the safety on when he goes to bed. He locks them, too, though that doesn't seem to matter much. He hasn't shot anyone, or himself. It's not a problem.

And sure, sometimes- maybe more often than he'd like- he wakes up in a cold sweat, or with a scream dying on his lips. Sometimes he doesn't get to sleep at all. He's never woken anyone else up. It hasn't gotten in the way of his work. He's fine.

More than fine, he's lucky. Some guys came home with their legs shot off, or addicted to something. Some guys didn't come home at all- Tim knew that well enough, having seen enough friends getting their heads blown off to know that going didn't mean coming back.

Sometimes, looking at his torso in the mirror, the scars bother him. But then he remembers Hoover, who'll never walk, and Thompson, who'll never hear, and Jamison, who'll never wake up. He remembers that he doesn't have it bad. He remembers he should be grateful.

So he puts his shirt back on, and voila- the scars are gone. Just like that. And if he can't look himself in the eye, it's only because he came home, leaving so many other soldiers- his _friends_ \- over there, getting shot at and dying, sleeping on the floor as he lay on his bed staring at the ceiling.

But maybe he'll go back someday. Even as he thinks it, he knows he won't, his heartbeat suddenly picking up speed. No, he can't- he's a U.S. Deputy Marshal now, he already has a job. What about Raylan, and Rachel, and Art? What, would he leave them hanging?

It wouldn't be the first time he'd come and gone back. He always settled back in almost immediately; the army lifestyle suited him. It was coming back home that proved to be the problem.

Every time was different, yet completely the same. The first few days were always a breathless blur: revisiting all of the old sights, seeing everyone he'd known before, the thrill of knowing you're not about to die. But then ducking all the questions got tiring, and you suddenly realized that none of those people had anything in common with you anymore.

It wasn't some 'waah, nobody understands me' type thing. It was that everybody was used to sleeping on real beds, and losing a friend meant grieving for weeks and time off work instead of just getting right back to it, and your ability to stare at nothing for hours, waiting for something to happen, was now more creepy than it was helpful and expected. They couldn't understand why you needed to have your gun, why you kept taking it apart and putting it back together, why you sometimes got caught staring at the pieces. It was suddenly 'scary' that you could turn off the human part of you like flipping a switch.

And then the nightmares. In his experience, they never started until he'd been back almost a week. After the first two times, he knew to expect them.

They aren't that bad, he supposes. Just the usual- screaming, blood, pain. They tend to vary. Sometimes he sees things that really happened, like when his spotter was killed. Sometimes just vague confusion, the smell of iron in the air and the sound of cries everywhere, turning around and around and not being able to find where the hell they were coming from. Other times, fantastical nonsense- hands reaching out, the faces of the people he'd killed ripping apart, begging for their lives. Which kind he got seemed to depend on what kind of day he'd had.

They don't come all that often. He can put up with them a few times a week. It does start getting annoying when they won't go away. If something happens, maybe when he shoots someone, or when he should've but didn't, they come and stick. So he spends the next two weeks barely sleeping. He'd gotten used to that in Ranger school, and over time. Coffee helps. So long as he manages to stay awake, it isn't so bad. It’s when he can't, when he falls asleep in his chair and wakes up 2 hours later unable to breathe, that bugs him.

What really pisses him off, though, is when the nightmares don’t have the damn decencies to stay in the night where they belong. Tim finds it harder than he thinks maybe he should to ignore it when he’s seeing things in the corners of his eyes, hearing things in the distance that aren’t there. Aiming your rifle and not being 100% sure which people in the scope are real is probably a sign that you shouldn’t be given the gun. But if he just doesn’t tell anyone, what’s going to happen? He knows who he’s supposed to be aiming at and he never shoots anyone he shouldn’t, so it’s not a problem. And if they took his gun- if he lost his job- well, he prefers not to follow that particular train of thought, because he’s pretty sure he’d fucking lose it.

Anyway, he’s lucky. He repeats that to himself sometimes when he thinks he’s falling apart- he’s lucky, and he should be grateful, and there isn’t any fucking problem. Maybe someday he’ll be able to convince himself.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in a while, and my first one for Justified, period. So I apologize for the shoddy writing.  
> I also apologize to any veterans or anyone with PTSD. I don't actually know much about either of those things, or what the experience is like, so I made it up and I'm sorry if it's dreadfully inaccurate.


End file.
